In the dark

# ROOM ZERO
## Chapter 8: In the Dark

The scream cut through the darkness like a knife.

"Nicole?" Riley called out, her voice swallowed by the black. "Was that you?"

No answer. Just ragged breathing somewhere to her left.

"Everyone stay calm," Paige's voice came from Riley's right. "Don't move. We don't know what's happening."

"Somebody help!" That was Nicole, panicked, gasping. "I can't—I can't breathe—"

"Nicole, listen to me." Paige's doctor voice, calm and authoritative. "You're having a panic attack. You need to breathe slowly. In through your nose, out through your mouth."

"I can't—it's too dark—I can't—"

The sound of stumbling, someone crashing into furniture.

"Everyone stop moving!" Aaron shouted. "We need to—"

The lights flickered back on.

Riley blinked against the sudden brightness, her eyes adjusting. Nicole was on the floor, hyperventilating, her hands clutching her chest. Paige was already moving toward her, medical training overriding everything else.

Kyle was pressed against the wall, looking shaken. Aaron stood in the center of the room, spinning slowly, searching for something.

"What the hell was that?" he demanded.

"A power surge?" Kyle suggested. "Or—"

"Or someone did it deliberately," Aaron finished. He was looking at each of them with open suspicion now. "The insider. They're trying to mess with us."

"Or Anna's trying to scare us," Riley said. She was still sitting in front of the camera, her heart pounding from the sudden darkness.

Paige knelt beside Nicole, checking her pulse, her breathing. "She's okay. Just a panic attack. Nicole, look at me. Focus on my voice."

Nicole's eyes were wild, unfocused. "I can't do this anymore. I can't—we have to tell them. We have to—"

"Tell us what?" Aaron moved closer. "Nicole, what are you talking about?"

"I can't—" Nicole was sobbing now, shaking her head. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry—"

"Nicole." Paige's voice was sharp. "What do you need to tell us?"

But before Nicole could answer, a different sound filled the room. A phone ringing. The old flip phone from Room One, lying on a table near the cameras.

They all stared at it.

"Should we—?" Kyle started.

Aaron grabbed it, flipped it open. "Hello?"

He listened for a moment, his face going pale.

"What is it?" Riley asked.

Aaron closed the phone slowly, his hand trembling. "That was... someone. Voice was distorted. They said we have a new problem."

"What problem?" Paige demanded.

"The air ventilation system. It's on a timer. When the countdown hits zero, it shuts off completely. But..." Aaron swallowed hard. "If the temperature in the room drops below sixty degrees, it shuts off early. As a safety measure, apparently. To prevent hypothermia in case of system failure."

"So?" Kyle asked.

"So the temperature is dropping. Has been since we entered this room. We have maybe three hours before it hits sixty degrees. Which means we have three hours before the air shuts off, not nine."

Silence.

"That's impossible," Paige said. "We felt the air conditioning when we came in, but it's not that cold—"

"Check the thermostat."

They all looked at the display on the wall. 64 degrees. And as they watched, it ticked down to 63.

"Oh god," Nicole whispered. "Oh god, she's going to kill us."

"No," Riley said, her mind racing. "She's forcing our hand. Making us choose faster. If we wait, we die. If we decide now—"

"We might still die," Aaron interrupted. "Even if we confess, what's to stop her from just... leaving us here? We're witnesses. We know she kidnapped us. We could go to the police."

"And say what?" Kyle asked. "That the girl we tortured in high school kidnapped us and made us tell the truth about it? Who's going to be sympathetic to us?"

"A jury might be," Aaron said. "This is illegal. Kidnapping. False imprisonment. Possibly attempted murder depending on—"

"Aaron." Paige's voice cut through his legal analysis. "Stop. Look at the clock."

08:47:23. And the temperature: 62 degrees.

"We don't have time for legal theories," Paige continued. "We need to decide. Now."

"I already decided," Riley said. She turned back to the camera. "I'm confessing."

"Me too," Kyle said quietly. He moved to stand beside another camera. "I should have done this ten years ago."

"You're both insane," Aaron said. But his voice lacked conviction now. The falling temperature, the ticking clock—it was all too real.

Paige looked at Nicole, still on the floor, still shaking. "Nicole? What about you?"

Nicole's voice was barely a whisper. "I have something to say first."

Everyone turned to look at her.

"I—" Nicole took a shuddering breath. "I need to tell you something. About how we got here."

"We know how we got here," Aaron said impatiently. "The insider drugged us."

"It wasn't just one person," Nicole said. She wasn't looking at any of them, just staring at the floor. "I mean, yes, I helped Anna. I drugged your coffee at that meeting I arranged. I drove the van. I helped set up the rooms. But I wasn't the only one."

The room went deathly quiet.

"What do you mean?" Riley asked slowly.

Nicole finally looked up, tears streaming down her face. "I mean there are two insiders. I'm one of them. But someone else has been helping too. Someone Anna trusts even more than me."

"Who?" Kyle demanded.

"I don't know." Nicole's voice cracked. "I swear I don't know. Anna kept us separate. She said it was safer that way. I only ever communicated with her. But there's someone else. Someone who helped with the technical stuff—the cameras, the sound system, the locked doors. Someone who's been here the whole time, watching, making sure everything goes according to plan."

"Here?" Paige's voice was sharp. "You mean in this building?"

Nicole nodded miserably. "They're somewhere in these rooms. Monitoring everything. Making sure we can't escape."

Aaron looked around wildly, as if expecting someone to jump out of the shadows. "Then we find them. We force them to let us out."

"You can't," Nicole said. "You don't understand. This whole place—it's like a maze. There are rooms we never went through. Passages I don't know about. Anna designed it that way. Even I don't know how to get out now that we're locked in."

"Why?" Riley asked. She felt betrayed, angry, but also—strangely—not surprised. Part of her had suspected Nicole all along. "Why did you do this?"

"Because I deserve it," Nicole said simply. "Everything Anna's doing to us—we deserve it. I've been living with that guilt for ten years, Riley. Every single day. Every kid I counsel, every parent I talk to about bullying, about standing up for others—it's all a lie. Because I'm the worst kind of hypocrite."

She looked around at them, her face ravaged by tears.

"When Anna contacted me three months ago, she didn't threaten me. She didn't blackmail me. She just... told me what her life had been like. What we'd done to her. And she asked if I wanted to help make it right. And I said yes. Because maybe, just maybe, if I helped her get justice, I could live with myself."

"By drugging us?" Aaron's voice was incredulous. "By kidnapping us? That's not justice, Nicole, that's—"

"What we did to her," Nicole interrupted. "We just did it over six months instead of twelve hours. And we drove her to try to kill herself instead of just threatening to let her die. Don't you see? We're not the victims here. We never were."

The temperature display clicked down to 61 degrees.

"This is all very touching," Aaron said sarcastically, "but we're running out of time and air. So here's what's going to happen. Nicole, you're going to tell us how to get out of here. Where the other insider is. How to shut down this whole system. And then—"

"I can't," Nicole said. "I told you, I don't know. Anna didn't trust me with that information."

"Then you're useless." Aaron turned away from her dismissively. "Paige? Kyle? Riley? One of you has to know something. One of you has to be the second insider."

"It's not me," Paige said.

"Or me," Kyle added.

They all looked at Riley.

"It's not me either," she said. But even as she said it, doubt crept in. Was it possible? Could she have blocked it out, the way she'd blocked out so many memories from that time?

"Then who?" Aaron demanded. "Who else could it be?"

The flip phone rang again.

This time, Kyle grabbed it. "Hello?"

He listened, his expression growing more confused, then shocked.

"What?" Paige asked. "What are they saying?"

Kyle lowered the phone slowly. "They said... they said we're asking the wrong question. It's not about who the second insider is. It's about what they want."

"What do you mean?" Riley asked.

"The voice—it wasn't distorted this time. I recognized it." Kyle's face had gone white. "It was Mr. Harrison."

The name hit like a bomb.

"That's impossible," Paige said. "Harrison is in California. He transferred after—"

"After Anna's accusations," Kyle finished. "After Lakewood quietly let him resign instead of firing him. After he moved to a new school where no one knew what he'd done."

"But why would he help Anna?" Aaron asked.

"He wouldn't," Riley said slowly, pieces clicking into place. "Unless... unless he's not helping Anna. Unless he's here for a different reason."

The lights flickered again. This time when they came back on, a section of the wall had opened—a hidden door they hadn't noticed before.

And standing in the doorway was a man Riley recognized from old yearbook photos. Older now, grayer, but unmistakably him.

Mr. Harrison smiled at them.

"Hello," he said. "I believe we have some unfinished business."

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**End of Chapter 8**